Re: Smartrpm was (Re: Fedora Core 4)

[Jeff Johnson <n3npq nc rr com>]

Andreas Hasenack wrote:

> I just today tried yum from FC3 and here are my complaints (bear in mind that
> these may have been addressed in a newer version: what I tested was from a
> fresh FC3 install):
> - yum update gives you absolutely no idea how long the download will take

Knowing your bw, and estimating network traffic, a priorii is no easy, 
nor yum, problem.

> - yum update is *really* verbose. You get pages and pages of data even before
>  getting a list of packages which will be upgraded

Verbosity increases the likelihood os diagnosing a problem. Wrapper to 
redirect
spewage to a log file, and invoke with -y, ain't *THAT* hard if the 
verbosity annoys.

> - yum update can't be aborted: ctrl-c just aborts the current download and
>  then yum proceeds to the next one where you have to press ctrl-c again and
>  so on.

Blame not yum for this, rpmlib runs with signals masked. If you 
want/need more responsiveness,
then there is a single call to check-and-exit that may need to be added 
to rpmlib within
some loops.

> - after downloading lots of headers and after lots of screens filled with
>  information yum finally showed me what packages would be upgraded/obsoleted/removed.
>  Then the packages would be downloaded and, again, there was no indication of
>  how long that would take. The ETA displayed was for each package, and not the
>  whole download.

See answer to 1).

> - yum update also doesn't tell you how big the download is in terms of size
>  (how many megabytes?)
>  

This could be computed/displayed, but only in units of bytes. I suspect 
that knowing the
size is not so useful, judging from 2 complaints regarding "how long 
...", but only 1 complaint
"how large ...". YMMV.

>  
>
> > I too was an apt user during fc1 and 2 but in the middle of fc2 i
> > switched to yum because it is native, well supported and pretty well
> > feature laden. I have issues with it like i do with most packages (and
> >    
>
> I think that (being native which means it's the official update method for a
> distro) is a very important reason. After all, the distro maintainers wouldn't
> care if you had a problem with something outside their distro.
>  

If you like apt, then please, by all means, *Use apt!* No one is 
stopping you ...

73 de Jeff